Thought3D introduced two major products for their Magigoo line.
It seems that the Malta-based company has been doing some thinking about how their products are used with today’s evolving desktop 3D printers. Their primary product is the Magigoo line of print plate adhesives.
These adhesives help ensure prints don’t peel off the plate during printing. While this was a very common issue years ago, it has been mitigated by the introduction of coated print plates. PEI, the most common coating, allows for reasonable adhesion of the most typical print material, such as PLA, ABS, PETG, and TPU.
However, as all 3D printer operators will attest, coated plates don’t always work. As someone that regularly uses several different FFF 3D printers, I can tell you that plate adhesion varies considerably between systems and plates.
Use of an adhesive does eliminate that uncertainty, and that’s critically important for production use of FFF 3D printers. Imagine a print farm where you’re never sure if prints will stick. The objective of a print farm is to maximize the percentage of successful jobs, and adhesion is often required.
This is where the new products from Thought3D come in. They’ve apparently done considerable research on how 3D printers are used today and came up with two new products.
Magigoo Glide Kit
The first will be of great interest to print farms. It’s called the “Glide Kit”. As you can see above, it’s essentially a handheld roller that can apply the adhesive to a print plate.
Seems simple, so why is this a big deal? If you’ve ever applied an adhesive to a print plate, you would immediately realize why this is so, so much better.
Typically, adhesives are applied with a spongy tip. The operator would dab a few times on the plate to get some adhesive out, then swish it around to cover the plate. When I do this, I would do a pass in the X direction, then the Y direction to ensure I cover all parts of the surface.
This is quite doable, but it takes some time to do it properly — but imagine doing that for 50 print plates in a print farm. That would be very time-consuming.
With the Glide Kit, you simply deposit a few drops on the plate and roll back and forth a couple of times. This would take only seconds to do, and those 50 plates would be done in no time.
Apparently, Thought3D spent considerable time testing a variety of roller types and sizes and came up with this design that they say is optimized for this purpose.
Magigoo Supergrip
The second product is called “Supergrip,” and it is a reformulation of their standard adhesive. This is quite important because their original formula was intended primarily for those using flat glass print plates years ago. Those plates definitely required an adhesive, but since then, they have largely faded away, replaced by spring steel-coated plates.
Thought3D reengineered their formulation based on the assumption that coated plates would be used. They explain:
“Thought3D created and stress-tested the Supergrip formulation on 15 different printer models and 12 leading build surface types, with over 1,500 hours of printing. This was not just another formulation. It combined a decade of Magigoo’s experience in creating purpose-built, safe, and user-friendly adhesives. The result is a robust solution that performs reliably across a wide range of materials, including PLA, PETG, ABS, ASA, and TPU. Supergrip is especially effective on modern flexible and coated build plates, where traditional adhesives often fall short.”
If you’re running a print farm with adhesives, this is fabulous news. If you’re often having trouble with your desktop FFF 3D printer with adhesion, you might consider looking at Supergroup.
